Henry came and laid his hand upon her shoulder: “Do not fret, auntie; I think there is no one to blame, if so, it must be my fault. I have always been a somnambulist, and always been ashamed of it—as though I could help it; but I had no idea that I possessed any hypnotic power; in fact I did not believe in the existence of such a force—at least I did not wish to believe it—which in all probability is just what led to this occurrence. You remember that we were speaking of hypnotism the night of the disappearance of the money; Marjy defended the theory, and I opposed it in order to draw her out; some assertions which she made struck me as being very forcible, and I could not rid myself of the thoughts engendered, any more than I could get rid of the repetition of that combination. It has been like a nightmare to me, and each day there had been a shadow of some occurrence of the past night which has persistently evaded me. I have been haunted all this day by something which occurred last night, which seemed like a vivid dream, and I thought I would put it to the test. You cannot be more surprised at the result than I am.” James and Marjy now came forward: “I think that Marjy and I will also have to make confession; I think that your being able to recall a portion of last night’s events was due to the slight influence which I gained over you; I tried to impress it upon your mind that you must remember what occurred, but I thought that I had failed completely.” He then made a complete explanation, which Marjy fully corroborated. Auntie laughed and sobbed in the same breath: “I’ve been an old crank; but the uncertainty worried me so that I could not help it—and my part of the general confession is that a sense of knowledge—which I could not grasp—tormented me continually, but I would not have confessed it for twice that amount of money. However, “All’s well that ends well.” Marjy, you may have the money to buy a wedding trousseau, and when Henry is my nephew I trust that he will not hypnotize his old aunt, either when he is sleeping or waking.” HIS FRIEND. The two log cabins stood on the grassy slopes of opposite mountains, the dark piñons forming a picturesque background; a babbling brook ran between the two, a boundary line of molten silver. Sam Nesterwood’s door faced north, and Phil Boyd’s door looked south; while they were building the cabins Phil remarked that it looked so much more sociable that way. When Phil came out in the morning to plunge his wind-browned face into the tin wash basin, filled with cold water from the stream below, he usually saw Sam doing the same; or perhaps, taking the grimy towel off the wooden peg just outside the door, with which he scrubbed his face, and even the tiny bald spot on the top of his head, to a shiny red.